I've often felt that the
coolest (and
hardest) thing about being
human is that you have to
straddle a very difficult
fence between responding solely to
instinctive, "
hard-wired"
animal impulses and being moved solely by
rational thought. For us men, this can be especially difficult: you're cut off by some
guy in traffic, and some part of your
brain cries out for
revenge. You have a choice of giving into this
impulse or
ignoring such feelings as
irrational.
What happens most of the time, of course, is that you make some sort of reply (usually involving the car horn and/ or your middle finger), but you don't actually hunt the offender down and kill him (though, sadly, this now happens all too frequently). So can we truly divorce ourselves from our animal impulses? We've succeeded in creating a society where the most violent of our impulses are kept in some sort of check, but I think that a wild animal is still lurking inside us all, and often reveals itself in ways that are not at all apparent to us.
I studied the Soviet Union extensively in college (back in the "good old days" when there was a USSR). Often, the question was put to us, "Why do the Russian (and associated other) people put up with such authoritarian governments as they've had throughout their history?" The answer, according to some academics, is that "The Russians like the whip" (a phrase of one of my professors).
It's hard to deny that Russia has had quite a number of repressive regimes in its long and storied history. But I think such statements are overly simplistic. I do think that the lesson of history is that people need to be led, and whether that leadership is benevolent or malevolent is probably largely a measure of luck.
Aristotle said it best when he declared that "man is a social animal." We congregate in societies, through our states, our religions, even our families. We have within us a basic need for some kind of companionship, whether as a utilitarian measure or otherwise. The worst thing you can do to a criminal is stick him in solitary confinement. Some people have managed to break this need, but it's manifest that they're in the minority.
Are people, at heart, sheep? Probably to some extent. The difference is that sheep have no choice in the matter, while we, as humans, do. We can ask questions, search for truth, take action. Most of us are condemned to sheep-itude by sheer inertia, but this is not the way things MUST be.
BTW, an interesting question would be what separates faith from blind obedience. Are those of faith merely sheep, or is this a misunderstanding of the nature of faith? I will not address this question here, but I note with interest that Jesus used sheep/shepherd metaphors in a very positive way.